Deciphered this into the Book of Mormon and created the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

Established a Religious oligarchy that was despised by Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois because Mormons advocated cooperation versus individualism and free enterprise which the high ranking Americans did not like.

Made people angry by voting as a unit and drilling militia for defensive purposed.

Accusations of polygamy because Smith had multiple wives

Joseph Smith and his brother killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

Mormon Moses – Brigham Young led the Mormons into Utah while singing “Come, Come Ye Saints”

Used irrigation to get the desert blooming

Seagulls ate the crickets that threatened the crops (monument dedicated to seagulls stands in Utah today)

5000 settlers arrived in 1848, more to come

Young created a well managed community

Young had 27 wives and fathered 56 children

Crisis when Washington gov’t decided that Young’s hierarchy was a threat. They marched in in 1857. The Mormons would not give up and the conflict quickly ended.

The Mormons then ran afoul of anti-Polygamy laws in 1862 and 1882. This also delayed statehood until 1896.

Free Schools for a Free people

At first government supported schools was something seen as something only for the poor. Now there was a movement for free public education that was met with some opposition.

Eventually though, people saw the value of education for it educated the voters and prevented them from making ignorant and uneducated decisions

Reading lessons were used to promote patriotism as well as teach reading

Published Webster’s dictionary in 1828.

William H. McGuffey

Published grade school readers

these readers promoted morality, patriotism, and idealism

Higher Goals for Higher Learning

Second Great Awakening resulted in creation of denominational liberal arts colleges in the South and West.

Mostly established to create a sense of local pride.

More boredom vs vitality

State supported universities in the south beginning with NC in 1795

University of Virginia – Brainchild of Thomas Jefferson

Women were frowned upon for seeking higher education. They were supposed to stay at home.

Too much education was believed to hurt the feminine brain and be a ‘health hazard’.

Emma Willard

Helped gain respect for secondary education for women

Est. Troy Female Seminary in NY.

Oberlin College in Ohio allowed women in as well as blacks.

Mary Lyon

established Mount Holyoke Seminary for women in South Hadley, MA.

More learning at private subscription libraries and tax-supported libraries.

Traveling lecturers carried learning to the masses.

Robert Waldo Emerson was an example of a traveling lecturer

Magazines flourished

An Age of Reform

many reform campaigns

Most were intelligent idealists touched by evangelical religion.

Trying to eradicate the evils such as war, alcohol and slavery

Many women went with reform crusades, it was something to get them away from the house and also fight for their own rights.

Tried to reaffirm values that disappeared when the factory economy came in and took over.

Imprisonment for debt was a disaster as some people were in for owning less than a dollar.

Eventually as laborers got their voice heard, the debtors’ prisons were abolished.

Brutal punishments and number of capital offenses were soon reduced. Prisons were believed to be able to reform and rehabilitate instead of just punish.

But the insane were still treated with cruelty.

Dorothea Dix

Frail, ill woman with willpower. Traveled many miles to show reports of how the cells for the insane were dismal. She petitioned to the Massachusetts legislature and soon she caused some change and improvements.

She also gave people a new view of the insane, that they were not willfully perverse but really ill

American Peace Society

Declared “war against war”

William Ladd

The orator that spoke during pre-civil war years for the APS

Peace crusade even spread internationally in the organizations of collective security of the 20th century.

Was set back by the Crimean War in Europe and the Civil War

Demon Rum – The “Old Deluder”

Drinking was a major issue that reformers tried to tackle.

Drinking was popular because life was hard and boring at times and for some strange reason, getting drunk was a great way to “leave behind” the world.

And of course, when people get drunk, they do some weird and sometimes violent things.

But the downside to having drunk people included less productivity, danger of accidents and it made the family a rather unpleasant place.

American Temperance Society

Formed in Boston in 1826

Thousands of local groups formed

Persuaded drinkers to sign temperance pledges

organized children’s clubs called the “Cold Water Army”

Used pictures, lectures, pamphlets

T.S Arthur’s “Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There” described how a town was ruined by Same Slade’s tavern

Modern reformers suggested temperance over teetotalism.

Some people wanted legislation to stop alcohol consumption, we all know how that went eventually *cough* prohibition

Neal S. Dow

Father of prohibition

Maine Law of 1851 was the prohibition in Maine

Other states followed suit…but this was soon repealed.

even so they were somewhat successful in reducing the drinking

Women in Revolt

So basically women were all to be stay at home moms and not do anything, not even vote. Legally the husband could beat her with a “reasonable instrument”. Yes quite nasty I know. And property was passed onto her husband, not her.

However, women were still better off in America than in Europe. In France, rape was only punished lightly while in the US, the death penalty may be issued for rape.

Women were thought to be physically and emotionally weak. This was increasingly stressed when the industrial revolution took place.

They were also considered more moral as men could be crude and they sometimes could turn into beasts and well…let’s not go any further shall we?

Home was the woman’s sphere.

Cult of domesticity

to take care of house and kids so husband could come home and relax and do nothing

Home was like a cage to women and some wanted some freedom.

Women began demanding rights.

fought for temperance and abolition of slavery.

Women wanted to spread their wings and fly, even if they had to take rotten eggs and cursing towards them.

Lucretia Mott

Quaker, London Anti-slavery convention denied her voice and that drove her to become a feminist.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

mother of 7

wanted to leave “obey” out of the marriage ceremony

advocated women suffrage (voting rights)

Susan B Anthony

militant lecturer

exposed herself to rotten garbage and vulgar epithets

so famous that feminists were sometimes called Suzy Bs

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell

First female grad. from med. school

Margaret Fuller

edited journal “The Dial”

took part in bringing unity and rep. gov. in Italy

Died in shipwreck off NY’s Fire Island

Grimke Sisters

antislavery

Lucy Stoner, Amelia Bloomer

Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 where Stanton red the “Declaration of Sentiments” declaring all men AND WOMEN are created equal.

Women’s rights was eclipsed by the civil war though

Wilderness Utopias

communities of communistic nature

Robert Owen

New Harmony, Indiana

Failure because not everybody wanted to work

Brook Farm was a place of brotherly and sisterly cooperation that did last quite well until 1846 when fire destroyed a building and sank the community into debt

Many attempts since Jamestown – died out because of change in methods or the competition from free enterprise and democracy

Shakers –longest living community led by Mother Ann Lee

religious communities

died out because they prohibited marriage and sexual relations

The Dawn of Scientific Achievement

Professor Benjamin Silliman

pioneer chemist/geologist and prof at Yale

Prof. Louis Agassiz

French swiss immigrant – Harvard

Prof Asa Gray

the “Columbus” of botany with over 350 books, monographs, and papers.

John J. Audubon liked watching birds and wrote the “Birds of America”.

Audubon Society to protect birds named after him

but he was the one that shot birds

Medicine was still behind

Smallpox

self-prescribed patient meds

one dose for people, 2 for horses

Fad diets

Surgery without anesthetics

Artistic Achievements

America, at first, did not have the resources to give focus to the arts. Many of the architecture followed Greek and Roman influences, just like the Europeans.

Greek Revival between 1820-1850

Thomas Jefferson and his Monticello was one of the classics and so was the University of Virginia, both Jefferson creations.

Painting was also a weak area. Workers were too busy and had no time to enjoy being painted. There weren’t enough wealthy to be painted. Middle class probably was also busy. Therefore, the early birds went to England.

Puritans – painting was a sinful waste of time, like theater

Competent painters that eventually emerged

Gilbert Stuart

Rhode Islander, most gifted

Several portraits of Washington, most dehumanized

When Washington posed, he had already lost teeth and original facial appearance

Charles Willson Peale

60 portraits of Washington

14 were painted from a pose

John Trumball

Painted Revolutionary War scenes

Nationalism from the War of 1812 turned the attention of the artists to the romantic landscape rather than just people

Hudson River school excelled in this art

In competition with the painters was the daguerreotype (a type of photograph) by Louis Daguerre

Music also started to become popular (Puritans would have objected before) with darky tunes.

“Dixie” written in 1859 (later became Confederate battle hymn) in Ohio

Stephen C. Foster

“Old Folks At Home”

Captured the plaintive spirit of slaves

The Blossoming of a National Literature

Not much literature written in America

Most writing was political essays

Only one that managed prestige was Ben Franklin’s Autobiography

Nationalism did spark some literature

Knickerbocker Group in NY allowed America to brag about the literature that matched the beautiful landscape

Washington Irving

NYC

First American to achieve international attention as a lit. figure. by writing about New York

Published Knickerbocker’s History of New York

Published The Sketchbook after his family business failed.

Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Interpreted Europe to America and vice versa.

James Fenimore Cooper

First American Novelist

Said he could write a better book than the English books

First failed, then wrote The Spy

Best known for Leatherstocking Tales and The last of the Mohicans

wide sale with Europeans

explored destiny of America’s republican experiment

Puritan William Cullen Bryant

wrote Thanatopsiswhich was a poem that Cullen wrote at 16

Made living on editing New York Evening Post

set model for journalism

All three authors above were a part of the Knickerbocker Group.

Trumpeters of Transcendentalism

Golden age of literature in 19th century, mostly caused by Transcendentalism

Resulted from the liberalizing of the strict Puritan doctrines

Foreign influences such as German romanticism and religions of Asia

Derived belief from John Locke “Truth, rather, “transcends” the senses. It cannot be found just by observation" Every person possesses an inner light that can illuminate the highest truthe and put him or her in direct touch with God or the “Oversoul”

Characteristics of Transcendentalism

Strict individualism in religion as well as social issues

Self-reliance, self-culture, and self discipline

There was hostility to authority as a result of these traits.

Humans are dignified, no matter what race they were

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trained as a Unitarian minister

Most famous for: Phi Beta Kappa address “The American Scholar” at Harvard

International declaration of independence urging American writers to break away from the European tradition

Poet and Philosopher but not best in either one

More influential as a philosopher thru his essays

Individualistic – advocated the traits of Transcendentalism (see above bolded 3 traits) and more such as self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism and freedom

Ideals reflected on those of expanding America which was pretty much all about the individual

Against slavery and supported the Union

Henry David Thoreau

Friend of Emerson, poet, mystic, transcendentalist, and nonconformist

against slavery and was against a government that supported slavery

refused to pay poll tax in Mass. in protest

Prose writer, Walden: Or Life in the Woods

Thoreau wrote about his two years of seclusion in a hut on the edge of Walden Pond.

He did this because he believed that cutting out the bloat of life would allow him to focus and meditate on the pursuit of truth

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

idea that if government makes an unfair law, people should protest it by not acknowledging its existence without any violence

this idea encouraged Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Walt Whitman

Famous collection of poems Leaves of Grass

highly romantic, emotional and unconventional

wrote some suggestive stuff

book was banned in Boston

Poem collection was a failure but eventually gain prestige after his death

America had turned back on Old World

Glowing Literary Lights

Not all literary figures were transcendentalist though but they were slightly influenced by it.

Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

taught modern languages at Harvard College

poet

tragic life

only American ever to be honored by Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey

John Greenleaf Whitter

another poet

aroused America on slavery issue

moving force of generation

poet of human freedom

James Russell Lowell

succeeded Longfellow

essayist, literary critic, editor, diplomat

Political Satirist in his Biglow Papers

Mexican War

Yankee dialect

papers condemned slavery and its expansion

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Anatomy teacher at Harvard

poet, essayist, lecturer, novelist, wit

nonconformist and conversationalist

“hub of the universe”

“The Last Leaf” honored the last “white Indian” of the Boston Tea Party

Louisa May Alcott

grew up in Concord, Mass. where the center of transcendentalism was

Wrote Little Women

wrote to support mother and sisters after her father ditched them for his idealism rather than realism

Emily Dickinson

lived alone

explored universal themes of love, death, nature, and immorality

Refused to publish poems but they were later discovered

William Gilmore Simms

novelist that portrayed the issues of the south even though he was unwanted in his own crowd because he was poor and the southern aristocrats that owned plantations and slaves would not appreciate him

Literary Individualists/Dissenters

Not all writers were optimistic

Edgar Allan Poe

weird but smart

saw lots of tragedies, wife fell ill of tuberculosis

suffered a lot

Failed at suicide

horror stories of his “nightmares”

“The Gold Bug” was probably the closest to the first mystery novel

Ghostly and ghastly “The Fall of the House of Usher”

prized by Europeans over Americans because he wrote pessimistic stories

Was later found drunk and died soon

Some were obsessed with Calvinism

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter described how the puritans made adulteresses wear a red letter “A” and described the psychological damages caused by the weight of the constant guilt

The Marble Faun dealt with Am. artists that witness murder in Rome.

Herman Melville

ill educated but went out to sea

served as a whaler

wrote about the sea, first stories were popular

wrote initially unpopular Moby Dick

Captain Ahab tried to capture Moby Dick, a whale that sunk his ship leaving him as the only one survivor.

was not popular because Moby Dick wasn’t straightforward

Portrayers of the Past

George Bancroft

Founded Naval Academy of Annapolis

Father of American History

wrote 6 volumes of American history to 1789

William H. Prescott

blind in one eye

wrote about conquest of Mexico and Peru

Francis Parkman

wrote volumes beginning in 1851

wrote about Britain and France and their issues with each other

Most historians were New Englanders because Boston had a well stocked library and were stimulating reading

Study Sites

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